The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 56, July 1952 - April, 1953 Page: 567
641 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
tributed in one way or another to the preparation of the Hand-
book, a job so tremendous that it could never have been under-
taken on a commercial basis. It can safely be stated that no other
state has anything which is remotely comparable to it.
It would have been easy for a book of this sort to degenerate
into a hodgepodge of unrelated facts. Not so with the Handbook.
It is marked by unity of presentation throughout, by conciseness
of style, by good judgment in the selection and emphasis of topics.
It is not a complete compendium of information about Texas,
which would be an impossibility, but the degree of completeness
which is attained is an achievement of major proportions.
Most interesting and valuable feature of the book, in my opin-
ion, is the careful and uniformly interesting presentation of in-
formation on Texas localities, ranging from Abbott in Hill Coun-
ty (which boasted nine businesses and a population of 265 in
1940) to Zybach in northern Wheeler County (which surpris-
ingly had six businesses and a population of ten in 1930 but
which has since dropped from the census reports). Whether you
seek information on Houston or on Rabbit Ears Creek, you will
find it in the Handbook.
In addition to its entries concerning places, the Handbook
contains articles dealing with famous and infamous people, with
events, organizations, enterprises, industries, agricultural pursuits,
and a variety of other topics, all arranged alphabetically. Selected
bibliographies suggest further avenues of approach to the more
important subjects. Cross references are also of great assistance
to the seeker after knowledge.
The price which the Association asks for the Handbook
($30.0oo) is modest indeed when one realizes that it represents
only the cost of printing and handling; the Association was
assisted in its preparation by grants from the Rockefeller Foun-
dation and by substantial support from the University of Texas.
The Handbook is a bargain purely from the standpoint of
volume. The average book contains 150,ooo words and costs
$4.00; the Handbook contains 2,000,000 words and costs $go.oo.
One would have to purchase thirteen standard-size books for
$52.oo to get the same number of words. But one would have to567
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 56, July 1952 - April, 1953, periodical, 1953; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101145/m1/671/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.